I found one Jack Clemo poem in a search. Did I say I disapproved of
nostalgia? This is so full of reverberations for me - my father
worked in the clay pits around St Austell, which is I guess where
this landscape comes from - I remember the milk rivers through the
woods and the white heaps of clay, and colours of rust and strange
machinery, and all sorts of indistinct other things... Ah well, I
was only six. I wasn't yet born when this poem was written.
Best
Alison
THE FLOODED CLAY-PIT
These white crags
Cup waves that rub more greedily
Now half-way up the chasm; you see
Doomed foliage hang like rags;
The whole clay-belly sags.
What scenes far
Beneath those waters: chimney-pots
That used to smoke; brown rusty clots
Of wheels still oozing tar;
Lodge doors that rot ajar.
Those iron rails
Emerge like claws cut short on the dump,
Though once they bore the waggon's thump:
Now only toads and snails
Creep round their loosened nails.
Those thin tips
Of massive pit-bed pillars - how
They strain to scab the pool's face now,
Pressing like famished lips
Which dread the cold eclipse.
(Jack Clemo Ed. 1961)
--
"The only real revolt is the revolt against war."
Albert Camus
Alison Croggon
Home page
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